Literate Ape is a literary digital 'zine and a dumping place for the random musings of a small shrewdness of diverse apes who managed to learn to read and write and use computers.

ABOUT THE APES IN CHARGE

Don Hall — co-editor

Don Hall is a freelance events consultant, founder of Literate Ape and author of four books including Belief is a Sledgehammer, Like a Burning Moth With No Idea How He Caught on Fire, and Strippers, Guns, and the Holocaust Museum.

David Himmel — co-editor

David Himmel is the author of the books A Camp Story and the forthcoming The Last DJ. An award-winning journalist, he is a contributor to POLITICO and is the former editor in chief of Chicago Health magazine.

Jun 10 Jeff Bezos Faces His Own Mortality

There’s nothing I want for. The best food, the best homes, the best women. I'm Jeff Bezos. I have it all. Except one thing. The one thing that no amount of money can buy. The one thing that man has craved since we climbed out of the primordial ooze and established order to the chaos that is life. I’m talking of course, of immortality.

The sad fact that none of us can get around is that we will all one day die. We don’t know when, we don’t know how, we just know death is a constant stranger, lurking behind us, quietly. We take vitamins and have surgery in order to keep it away, but death always ends up coming and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Or at least, there wasn’t.

In our Amazon secret headquarters, we have a rock that was found many years ago in sector 7G-9 of the Alpha Centauri system. The rock was made of no minerals or elements that we know of. It was seemingly carbon, but like no carbon-based thing humanity has encountered. The rock was impenetrable. Hammers, lasers, high frequency sound waves, nothing could get it to even chip. Then, a week ago, it began to emit a hum. The hum was picked up on our internal scanners and I immediately called in our team of geologists to inspect. When the geologist went into the room with the rock, their heads all exploded. Not just exploded, but turned themselves inside out. The men were still alive, but their lives were a fate worse than death. We did the only merciful thing and sent them to our laboratories to be studied.

Meanwhile, the humming turned into something resembling a scream. This scream went on for a day, when finally the rock shattered into millions of tiny pieces. What was inside the rock was something that gave off an otherworldly glow. It called to me. No one else could hear, but I could. It told me to come into the room and to eat it. It told me that it would give me the powers of a god. That wasn’t enough for me. I didn’t want to be a god. I wanted to be God. The God that would have no other gods before him. It told me it could make that happen. So, I went into the room and ate it.

Immediately, I could feel the power of trillions of souls inside of me. I walked out and down to Richard Branson’s room. He could see the glow from my eyes and knew that not the same person he once knew. He asked what I was. I told him I was no longer a man. I was his new God. A better one. I then told him that he had to bow down and profess his love to me, his Lord, or I would destroy him. He cowered and begged for mercy. I am a just God, so I allowed him to live.

I realized fast that it would be an uphill battle making the sinners you call humanity understand that I am God. I began exacting swift vengeance across Earth. I wanted to make things right for the people. I wanted to give them the things that the old God would never. Things like peace of mind. Things like calm.

They sent armies after me. I smote them all with but a twitch of my eye. The armies kept coming and coming but I killed every single last one of them. I begged them to stop. I tried to tell them I was here to make things into the paradise God promises but could never deliver. They all rejected me. All of them. I was forced to slay every single living person on Earth. Men, women, children, all were torn apart by my fury.

Then, Richard Branson came to me and said he was still a believer, but I could tell something had changed. He was no longer one of my faithful. And when he tried to stab me with the flaming sword of the Archangel Michael, I could see exactly what he was: a vessel for the Heavenly Host. Yes, I had destroyed all of God’s little playthings on Earth and now He had sent his little angels to stop me. I knew this was coming. And I was looking forward to it.

Michael brought down his flaming sword on me but I grabbed his wrist before he could land a blow. I tore his arm from his body and used it to ram the sword straight through him. He died at my feet. Was this the best God could do? I shouted at the Heavens to God and demanded He face me Himself. Instead, from out of the ground came a creature with seven heads and ten horns and upon his heads the name blasphemy. It seems that even with their family squabble, Michael’s brother was here for vengeance. I had awaken the fallen Archangel, Lucifer himself.

I was prepared. Lucifer may scare others, but I am God. I grabbed him by his throat and slammed him down onto the Earth. “You should have stayed out of this. I would have let you live,” I told him. Then, I crushed him into nothingness with my fists raining down blow after blow upon him for the next three hundred years.

It was now time for my meeting with God. He was on the throne, and that throne now belonged to me, Jeff Bezos. I came to the Pearly Gates and tore them open, throwing St. Peter into the dark nothingness. As I got closer to God’s Throne, His other pathetic children came. Gabriel blew his trumpet in warning, but I flicked my wrist and he disintegrated into so much dust. Uriel came, fire in his palm, but I quickly froze him into ice and melted him into a puddle that I then made his brother Raphael drink in front of me. With Raphael thoroughly humiliated, I crushed his head and tore off his wings and used them to beat Jeremiel to death. I had lain waste to Heaven’s archangels. There was now nothing between me and God.

When I got to His Throne Room, He sat, defiantly. He didn’t utter a word. Just stared at me.

I summoned all my anger and bellowed, “My name is Bezos, king of kings; Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” and released a torrent of eternal fire that turned God into ash that blew away.

I then came to the Throne and sat down upon it. I was now at my rightful place.

And then I awoke. I awoke and I was just a man. I was just normal Jeff Bezos. Just a normal guy who is worth $135.8 billion.

So to you, the Princeton University graduating class of 2019, I say to never give up on your dreams. No matter what people say. No matter how far-fetched or difficult or blasphemous they are. Pursue all earthly and heavenly pursuits and destroy all that stands in your righteous way.